Last Chance To View (For Free) & Order (Paid) 24,000 Local Athletic Photos

THE BAD NEWS: “The Village Reporter” has provided free photo album viewing online for years with the opportunity for our online readers to order prints at prices well below other newspaper website pricing. These free photo albums are composed largely of local high school athletic events, school activities and community gatherings. We have never really looked at this service as something that would come as a profit to our company but we did desire to at least come close to covering our expenses. After over 330,000 photo views on our website and figuring our payroll time to stay at events from start to finish, to edit photos, then to upload them; we have found that we are obtaining around $20 of expense per $1 in photo prints being purchased as a minimal fraction of 1% of website visitors supported our efforts with an order. Due to this lack of support, we will be removing over 24,000 athletic, school and community photos from www.thevillagereporter.com in early September, just a few days away as our renewal for our service provider is due and we cannot justify the large and pricey annual expense. If you desire to order any of these photos you will want to do so now as once they are taken off the web they are gone forever. We believe these albums contain the highest volume of Edon Bomber, Montpelier Locomotive, North Central Eagle, Hilltop Cadet, Stryker Panther, Fayette Eagle, Pettisville Blackbird and Wauseon Indian athletic photos available for online viewing.

THE GOOD NEWS: Despite our prices for photo reprints mentioned above being the lowest around, we still had some feedback that prices were too expensive. With tens of thousands of dollars invested into equipment and equally that much placed into payroll time this mindset is honestly a tough pill to accept (that $4 for a photos was too expensive when our competition’s pricing was from $5 to $30 per photo), but we do understand times are tough and we honor and always try to listen to our readers. So going forward we will begin to offer new photo galleries at www.thevillagereporter.com with the option to purchase a digital download (vs a traditional photo print) for around 20% of what we charged for a physical photo (when shipping was included – digital photos will arrive as an email link). Those purchasing can then print their photos for a few cents at local photo labs, use them on facebook, whatever they desire.

Questions or thoughts? Contact me at publisher@thevillagereporter.com and as always, we appreciate your support.